With an Olympic gold to her name, a PhD in homicide to finish and a social
life to catch up on, what will rower Katherine Grainger do next?

In the Hollywood version of the life of London 2012 gold medal winner Katherine Grainger, she would surely be played by Kate Winslet.

The Titanic actress has the requisite broad shoulders and athletic physique to portray the Glasgow-born Team GB rower, the long, intelligent face, the air of gritty determination.

But much more saliently, only an Oscar-winner – pipped at the post many times previously – could possibly empathise with the highs and lows of a sportswoman who is, for many, the embodiment of the indomitable Olympic spirit.

“Sport is a strange, selfish pursuit in some respects,” muses Grainger, 37. “But when you witness the outpouring of emotion from the crowd and see the hugely positive impact your win has on the team and the nation, you feel reassured that your achievements have a meaning that goes beyond you.”

Quite so. Grainger’s back story was well-known in the run up to London 2012, and her sheer indefatigability captured the imagination of the public; having memorably won silver at three previous Olympics and notched up six World Championship titles, she continued, single-mindedly, to strive for Olympic gold.

She had received her silver in Sydney with astonished delight. At the Athens Games, where she took silver in the coxless pair, her joy was more confined. In Beijing, she and her teammates were so devastated at coming second in the Women’s Quad that they couldn’t stem their tears as they stood on the podium.

“When you want gold, winning silver is a failure,” she says. “It might sound ungrateful, but that’s the truth of it.”

And so the stage was set for Grainger’s performance in the double sculls this summer. Would she finally triumph after years spent dreaming of nothing else?

Mercifully, she did. To the deafening cheers of the home crowd, she and team-mate Anna Watkins passed the line first. Their response was a study in dignified delight; no weeping or histrionics, just arms raised in victory and broad smiles.

“I was joyful at a cellular level,” says Grainger, who is one of 12 nominees for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. “When I sobbed at Beijing and looked so composed at London, they were visceral responses I couldn’t control.”

Confident and articulate, with an entertaining line in self-deprecation, Grainger, who is single, was made an MBE in 2006. She is just the sort of enthusiastic sporting ambassador who encapsulates the ethos of the much-vaunted “2012 legacy”.

Today, she will be the first-ever sports person to deliver the Royal Society of Edinburgh Christmas Lecture. “Sport teaches you so much; how to manage success and negotiate failure, how to be part of a team, how to be the best leader you can be – and how to make your dreams come true,” she says. “My message is to set yourself magnificent goals and work hard to achieve them.”

Even as she radiates can-do positivity, Grainger is frank enough to admit that there were many dark moments when she was beset by doubt and hopelessness.

“After Beijing, I felt as though I had suffered a bereavement,” she says, quietly. “I had been living for that moment for years, and when I lost it was like a death. Coming through that was the most challenging and the most interesting aspect of my career. I couldn’t bear the prospect of possibly failing on such an epic scale again, but I felt that this was unfinished business that I was compelled to complete.”

The perfect arc of Grainger’s story cries out for filmic treatment, not just because there’s the added dimension of her academic excellence, but also the distinctly unusual absence of sporting flair or even world-class competitiveness in her childhood.

“I never grew up thinking sport was my future, and I never had the kind of parents who took me to the pool and threw me in,” she says.

“My parents are both teachers, my sister is a social-worker-turned-teacher and I was happy to follow a conventional path to university to study law.”

At Edinburgh University fresher’s week she signed up for activities such as skiing, trampolining and juggling. She wasn’t in the least bit tempted to row, but accompanied a friend to a meeting, where she was told she had the right build.

“There were 54 women in the room, and the coach said they would choose 16 to join the team,” remembers Grainger. “I suddenly, urgently, wanted to be one of the 16 they picked.”

She was duly picked at the trials. Her sheer muscle power earned her a place in the squad, but she gradually learned that brawn isn’t enough to win at an elite sporting level; the brain needs to kick in, too.

“Strength can only get you so far, then you need to harness it in the service of technique,” she says. “I was getting my head around that when I overheard my coach tell someone else that I was good enough to row for Scotland – that had a real effect on my mindset.”

At the age of 20, in her third year of study, Grainger did indeed row for Scotland. In her fourth year, it was suggested she should go to the British trials, where the Olympic team would be selected. “It was a real OMG moment,” she laughs.

In between doing her law finals and graduating, she made the British under-23 rowing team – and almost immediately won the 1997 World Championship coxless pair, in a first for the team and a breakthrough for women’s rowing.

During the next two years she gained a Master’s in medical law and ethics from Glasgow University and then moved south to row full-time with the British team.

“I can’t overstate the importance of National Lottery funding, which had just been introduced,” she says. “Without it I would have had to work to support myself and squeeze training around that.”

Sydney 2000 was Grainger’s first Olympics and she was overwhelmed. “If only you could bottle it,” she sighs. “We didn’t expect to do anything much at Sydney, and to get the silver was a complete shock.”

Fast-forward 12 years and two more silvers and the run up to London saw her living and breathing her sport. From 7.30am to 4.30pm every day she focused on reaching peak condition; her diet was monitored, her heart rate recorded, blood samples taken from her ear to gauge her metabolic performance.

“You are constantly competing with your teammates for a place on the Olympic squad – and they are going all out to beat you. The coaches pit you against each other. It was like The Hunger Games without the death.”

She pulled off a double World Championship coup in 2010 and 2011. Only Olympic gold remained tantalisingly out of reach.

Grainger was “gutted” to miss the opening ceremony – her event was too close for her to be out late – so she and her teammate dressed in their strip and watched the coverage on television. Then, 48 hours later, the eyes of the world were on them as they rowed to victory.

“It will always be there. Those six and a bit minutes that changed our lives are part of sporting history.”

Looking forward, she hasn’t yet decided whether to train for Rio 2016: she has a PhD in homicide at King’s College London to finish and her social life to catch up on.

Her single status has been described as something of a sacrifice in her bid to be the best. Grainger disagrees. “It’s a choice. People make career choices all the time and have to live by them. I’m fortunate to have been doing a job I love. You need to be in a happy place to find a good relationship, so who knows what will happen now that I’m on dry land for the foreseeable future.”

She cannot say whether she will ever practice the law she studied so hard: “I’m still trying to decide what I’m going to do when I grow up. But the great thing I have learned is that life always has more it can teach you – if you’re prepared to listen.”